A starter grant is requested to gain familiarity with the use of Gaussian92. The eventual goal is to perform high level ab initio calculations on porphyrins, hydroporphyrins, and their respective N-alkyl substituted compounds. All of these compounds suffer from singlet instability at semi-empirical and lowel level (RHF) ab initio theory levels. Consequently, incorrect geometries with alternating long short double bond length patterns are obtained. Higher level calculations (MP2) will result in correct geometries and better estimates of the electronic features of these compounds.